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See the original image at nature.com —

Molecules multiplied

nature.com — The ability to amplify minuscule quantities of DNA into workable samples, using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), has transformed biology. Now Chad Mirkin and Hyo Jae Hoon at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, think they have a working example that proves that the feat is possible for compounds other than nucleic acids.

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  • juliohm, on 08/13/2008, -0/+1there's your chicken of golden eggs!
  • Murrabbit, on 08/13/2008, -5/+2Self-replicating molecules? But my bible doesn't say anything about those!
    • drizzlelicious, on 08/13/2008, -0/+2Since when does this contradict what the Bible says?
    • azneggrollz, on 08/13/2008, -0/+0they don't self replicate...PCR is a technique where you (in simple terms) denature the DNA into it's strands, add primer and the materials, incubate it at the various temperatures, and repeat. At the end you're left with millions of identical copies if you had run this several times
    • OfficialJoe, on 08/13/2008, -6/+3Gen 1:11 Then God said, "Let the earth produce vegetation: plants bearing seeds, each according to its own type, and fruit trees bearing fruit with seeds, each according to its own type." And so it was.

      Gen 1:21 So God created the large sea creatures, every type of creature that swims around in the water and every type of flying bird. God saw that they were good.
      Gen 1:22 God blessed them and said, "Be fertile, increase in number, fill the sea, and let there be many birds on the earth."

      Gen 1:27 So God created humans in his image. In the image of God he created them. He created them male and female.
      Gen 1:28 God blessed them and said, "Be fertile, increase in number, fill the earth, and be its master. Rule the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that crawl on the earth."

      And man became scientist, discovering the wonders of self replication that was so obviously part of the natural world around them, they wrote it into books and felt proud of their own genius. Drinking deep on the juice of knowledge they denounced God as an impossibility as their mighty minds show no proof of His existence, seeing as their minds exceed the power of the Creator, being scientists and all.

      God just shook his head, smiling. Eating from the tree of knowledge is good if one eats from the tree of life also. These two maketh no sense without each other. He was then saddened knowing that, in their gluttony for intellectual power, they will never enjoy life - they are blinded by their own pride. They lost the joy of discovery and claimed creation as something of their own making. It is so written in their books after all.

      Whether you believe in God or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is that as a scientist, or even just run of the mill intellectual, you need to a) know more about what you are criticizing than the person you are talking to, b) you need to take context into account and c) you should accept the possibility that you may in fact be wrong about your interpretation of things.

      And since I used the word God and quoted the bible, I can only assume that there will be a massive down-digging fest. Enjoy.
      • gordonj, on 08/13/2008, -1/+3"c) you should accept the possibility that you may in fact be wrong about your interpretation of things."

        Interesting point. Does it apply to religious belief, or just scientific/intellectual knowledge?
      • OfficialJoe, on 08/13/2008, -3/+2I wouldn't have mentioned it if I thought it would apply only to a certain knowledge set.

        Also, science is as much based on belief as is religion. It is a human characteristic to start any argument from a set of assumptions - some provable (yet unproven) and some proven. Science has a number of assumptions that cannot be scientifically proven.
      • gordonj, on 08/13/2008, -0/+4That is a fair point. Many religious people are unwilling to admit that any of their views could be erroneous.

        "science is as much based on belief as is religion."
        I disagree with you here. Science is evidence-based. Religion is faith-based. You can argue that belief in something that has evidence is equivalent to belief in something that doesn't, because it's all belief at the end of the day, but that is just semantics. Practically nothing in the bible is provable. That's why it requires faith.

        Can you give me some examples of scientific assumptions that can't be scientifically proven?
      • justinbonnet, on 08/13/2008, -0/+3Either way both science and religion does not prove nor disprove the existence of a 'god' nor is it in any form "evidence" that god does not exist. I believe we're part of a cycle...religion is creation of the human ego and fear itself. If god exists. He exists in all of us. we are all god. assuming hes a imaginary wizard in the sky because of another man's bible isn't evidence against him. Ignore religion. Speak from your own instincts without referring to another mans words. And define what your human conscious actually is.
      • OfficialJoe, on 08/13/2008, -1/+2For starters, the scientific method assumes the validity of mathematics to describe actuality. It also assumes the possibility (if not the "fact") of objectivity. These are two very good examples.

        Maths is a great tool to interpret what we see, but since it is a language (symbolic expression of interpreted meaning) it is as fallible as any other language. And as any good post modernist believes - we are inherently subjective. We cannot see things for what they truly are, we can only interpret what we see.

        But for science to work, the scientist must have faith in the tools they use. More importantly, they must believe in the validity of the theory that precede their own path of discovery (a very human path, filled with errors and assumed truths).

        The interesting thing about the scientific community is that it suffers from the same problems as that of the religious community. Not all scientists claim objectivity, nor rely 100% on the tools they use to discover things. Other scientists tend to go all fundamentalistic and claim that everything can and will be understood through science.

        As for faith - I agree that practically nothing is provable in the bible. It is as much a book of science as is a textbook on European history. If I were to act as a pure scientist, I wouldn't today be able to prove that Hitler existed after all.

        That the bible isn't about proving things. It is about living a specific kind of life. The proof of its value lies in the consequences of a life well lived.

        In the end, both science and the bible suffers from the problem of subjective interpretation, which brings me back to the issue at hand - neither scientist, nor believer has any grounds for arrogance.
      • o0joshua0o, on 08/13/2008, -0/+3It's important not to confuse "faith" with "confidence". Scientists don't have "faith" the way religious people do, they just have a degree of confidence that ranks somewhere on a continuum from "low confidence" to "high confidence". Science doesn't "prove" anything, either. Science just states that each hypothesis ranks somewhere on a continuum from "not supported" to "well supported". In summary, most scientists would say that the hypothesis that the God of Abraham exists has little to no support, and therefore they have low confidence in the validity of that hypothesis.
      • OfficialJoe, on 08/13/2008, -0/+1@o0joshua0o: confidence is a component of faith. Faith is to trust in your expectation that a given construct is true. Trust requires confidence in the methods and tools that you used to arrive at that point.

        What I take issue with is the overconfidence so many members of the scientific community exhibit. The tools of scientific method is part of a given paradigm which is as fallible as the paradigm of the religious.

        A large percentage of the vocal part of the Digg community seems to have this particular arrogance down to a fine art, making sweeping comments on a subject matter they know very little about and seem uninterested in trying to understand.
      • gordonj, on 08/13/2008, -0/+3I agree that pure objectivity is probably impossible to achieve in any field. Science however does it's best to try to obtain objectivity. This is the reason for the scientific method, why observations must be repeatable, why hypotheses must be tested, why control experiments are used and why the peer-review process exists. Science is the best system for discovering the underlying causes of phenomena. That is what it is designed to do. The Bible is not designed for this reason at all. It was never meant to be the absolute word on how things work, but many people take it to be absolutely and literally true. They will claim that scientific discoveries are wrong (or lies propagated by atheists who are conspiratorially trying to undermine Christianity) if scientific evidence goes against what the bible says.

        If we are searching for the true nature of the universe and the physical world, I feel that as a system for discovery, science is far superior to religion because it at least does attempt to be objective. The scientific explanation for something is by definition the best natural explanation available (if a better theory comes along, it will replace the previous theory). Religion is not a system designed for discovery, in fact dogmatic stances and the unwillingness to admit potential fallibility leads me to personally believe that it is more likely to inhibit discovery. Religion has no place to state that scientific discoveries are wrong because they contradict the teachings of the religion for this reason.
      • gordonj, on 08/13/2008, -0/+1"What I take issue with is the overconfidence so many members of the scientific community exhibit. The tools of scientific method is part of a given paradigm which is as fallible as the paradigm of the religious."

        I don't agree that they are equally fallible systems. A system that makes statements of truth based upon logical interpretations of empirical evidence is bound to be less fallible than one that doesn't. I'm not saying science isn't fallible, I'm saying that just because religion is fallible and science is fallible doesn't mean that they have the same level of fallibility.

        What I take issue with is religious people who automatically assume that scientific theories are false (or conspiratorial lies) if they contradict a literal interpretation of a holy book that was written (by men) thousands of years ago. All you have to do is look at the results of scientific enquiry to know that the scientific method generally works well. What technological innovations has religion led to?
    • nitsuj, on 08/13/2008, -2/+4@OfficialJoe

      Nice self-narrated fantasy land you're living in.
      • OfficialJoe, on 08/13/2008, -2/+2You kinda missed the point if the narration is all you focused on. I was commenting on the arrogance of youthful intellectualism.
      • nitsuj, on 08/13/2008, -0/+2"He was then saddened knowing that, in their gluttony for intellectual power, they will never enjoy life - they are blinded by their own pride. They lost the joy of discovery and claimed creation as something of their own making. It is so written in their books after all."

        +

        "I was commenting on the arrogance of youthful intellectualism."

        Kettle. Pot. Black.

  • metateck, on 08/13/2008, -1/+3But the graphic doesn't make any sense at all.
  • PeterBassett, on 08/13/2008, -1/+2It's only for organic molecules. Really clever stuff. But you won't be getting golden eggs out of it, not even if you rub the flask with cheetah blood.
  • infiniphunk, on 08/13/2008, -0/+2looks like a sheet of blotters to me.
  • newl, on 08/13/2008, -0/+7Replicators? Hey, has anyone seen Daniel? Teal'c, have you seen Daniel?
  • toff72, on 08/13/2008, -0/+0i hope it will work with swedish blonds!
  • thavi, on 08/13/2008, -0/+2"in principle"... yeah... detecting trace amounts of explosives in an airport is the dream here i bet; however, explosive chemicals are by definition high in energy, energy which has to come from somewhere to synthesize the stuff in the first place... catalysis of those compounds just doesn't seem feasible
    • merlin5, on 08/13/2008, -0/+1But wouldnt it be interesting if high energy molecules could be assembled this way without requiring the energy input?
      I really despise the laws of thermodynamics.
  • Kakcoo, on 08/13/2008, -0/+2Mmmmmm. Self-replicating LSD.
  • L0C0loco, on 08/13/2008, -0/+5Woohoo, all the acetate we could ever want!

    The story makes this sound like a chemical amplifier for a specific molecule rather than a generic method to replicate any molecule. So, I guess all that is left is to discover similar processes for each and every chemical that may actually be of some use. Interesting from a theoretical perspective, but hardly of any practical value - yet.
    • dafragsta, on 08/13/2008, -0/+1You don't think the process would be somewhat similar?
  • tweedius, on 08/13/2008, -0/+2Misleading title, misleading description. PCR is nothing hard to imagine because all it does is employ the same type of reaction that DNA undergoes to replicate itself anyways. A way to replicate any (organic) molecule would be truly revolutionary. This....does not do that. Acetate? Seriously...BFD. That is why I am a chemist though, we have the schematics of a chemical factory built within us and all of the living things around us, yet we still don't have a lot of clues of how to play with the atomic legos as it were.

    But, I'll still log into my universities website to proxy into the ACS and download the article...I hope I'm not going to be as disappointed as I was when I read this 5 paragraph story.
  • thecoolestguy, on 08/13/2008, -0/+1we don´t need any competition to carbon-based life forms.
  • Crushkilla, on 08/13/2008, -0/+1Holy crap, Chad Mirkin was my Chem professor last year!
  • chompapotamus, on 08/13/2008, -0/+1i got molecules multiplying in my nutsack
  •  

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